The Goddess of Chaos staggered, body jerked as if at the mercy of a puppeteer. Hooked claws sprang from her fingers and she ripped her withered flesh. Ridley wanted to turn away from the nauseating sight, but pinpricks of light peeked from the slashes. Then patches. Swatches of the goddess flaked off. The light, nuclear in intensity, seared Ridley’s eyeballs and stabbed every cell in her body. She baked, marrow boiled, bones softened, and blood evaporated. Finally, unconsciousness ended the horror.
The sting of a slap on her cheek forced her eyes open. First fog clouded her vision, and then four of everything swam into focus. Her stomach flip-flopped. She gritted her teeth and rolled away. Another slap hit her cheek, this time harder, knocked her head to the side. The four settled into one being, Khuket. Smooth, golden skin greeted Ridley’s startled gaze. That gaze traveled down the goddess’s body and skimmed over her now perky boobs, tight abs, and sleek legs. Youth had never looked so good.
Khuket leaned back on her haunches, giving Ridley enough room to sit up. She did a quick mental check, some arithmetic—two plus two equals four—some multiplication— seven times seven equals forty-nine—and finally, some algebra—x+y equals…whatever. She remembered what year it was and who was president. All of her faculties were intact. Khuket hadn’t turned her into a plant. But as she gained her feet, she saw the others scattered like a deck of cards caught in a maelstrom. Lydia had leaned next to Ridley. The woman’s blank stare and slack mouth told of her condition. All of their conditions.
What have I done? Wasn’t the first time Ridley had questioned her actions and the actions of those with whom she’d aligned herself. Though it was the first time the body count had reached so high and was so personal. For the first time, she questioned the value of her life.
“How did you do this?” she asked when she found her voice.
The loveliest smile spread over Khuket’s face. “The Book of Eidos and the Scroll of Heka. So many forgotten rituals. So much knowledge. Come. We have much to do.” Khuket stepped over the bodies blocking her way to the door which opened as she approached.
Ridley couldn’t move. Her muscles locked. Stepping over them, people that trusted her, treating them as discarded timber. She wanted Khuket to use the book to save her, not strip the Order of their lives.
What the hell have I done? Seeking comfort, she reached for the locket around her neck.
Disciple!
The multi-toned voice exploded in her head and spun her around. Khuket waited in the doorway. Light pulsed beneath her skin, a kaleidoscope of color with an erratic heartbeat. She’d done it. Actually done it, absorbed the consciences and the life force of the Order. She was one step closer to her achievement. One more piece of the puzzle and everything would fall into place. Avery was all she needed.
Ridley stepped over Lydia, then Carolyn, and Edith, and Patricia. She stopped looking down, too many vacant gazes accusing her, begging her. You planned this, remember? You were the catalyst.
Yeah, too late to forget.
Chapter Eighteen
This was a dream. It simply had to be. Nothing could feel so rich, so decadent skimming over her breast until her nipples leaped to attention. The heady sensation shifted to her flanks, wrapped around her hips, slipped between her thighs—kissed her apex—and streamed down her legs. Breathy sighs escaped from her parted lips, an unspoken plea for more. Please! She opened her eyes, needing an explanation for what Avery was doing to her.
It wasn’t Avery hovering above, gliding across her skin. He lay next to her mumbling and restlessly turning in his sleep. His tattoo, the inky residue that lived on his skin, the entity that shared his existence, had separated from him and caressed her as intimately as Avery had hours before.
Terror would be the logical response followed closely by a glass-shattering scream. Not fascination. Part of his Ink peeled from her skin and leaned close to her face as a blank canvas of black silk. Then it changed, features morphed into the pseudo fabric. A squarish head and prominent forehead, aggressive eyebrows perched above intense eyes, an angry jaw, and a grim mouth that was relaxed in a teasing smile.
“Avery?” she whispered.
The flesh and blood version jerked upright, no sleepy transition from unconsciousness to alert and oriented, but his face did register stunned surprise at the presence of his alter ego. In increments, the inky substance returned to Avery’s skin, curved over his muscled bicep as if it owned the space. It even shrunk in size. Now, the swoops and curlicues ended at his shoulder instead of his right elbow.
Avery whipped back the covers. Two words left his lips. “Get dressed.”
***
Avery parked the car in the driveway and held his impatience in check while Emeline’s eyes widened at the imposing edifice of RockGate. Wait ‘til she sees the inside. He punched a code into a panel next to the door and a few seconds later, a mechanized click sounded. She made it through the door but halted in the foyer, mouth agape, gaze roving over everything.
Hector appeared. By the quirk of his formal smile, Emeline’s blatant awe pleased him. “Good evening, Sir and Madame.” He gave them both a short bow.
“This is Miss Gamble, Hector. Please show her into the solarium.” Avery pivoted without waiting for an answer, his mind already focused on finding Roman.
“Avery.” The sound of his name pulled him up short. Emeline marched up to him. Her tight smile a practiced lie on her lovely face.
“Umm…take me with you.”
For the discussion he was about to have with Roman, no. The fewer people present, the better, ‘cause things could get bloody quickly. “Hector will take care of you until I return.”
She grabbed his arm. “How long are you going to be?”
I don’t know, he almost snarled. The coming conversation already had him on edge, but her fingers trembled on his arm and she chewed her bottom lip. After the night they had her fear hit him as a surprise. Then again, she did wake up with his Ink in her face. Though, why she would be afraid of being at RockGate, he had no clue. She should be pleased to be away from him.
“Not long.” He squeezed her fingers in what he hoped was a reassuring touch and signaled to Hector who waited a discreet distance away.
Avery moved through the house quickly, controlling his anger while searching for Roman. In the library, a book clasped in his hand as he searched the shelves for another, was where Avery found him. Books haphazardly tossed onto the desk and chairs, littered the usually immaculate room.
He crossed the distanced separating them, yanking off his coat, and sweater in the process. Bare-chested, he stopped an arm’s length away. “What. The. Fuck. Are. We? Tell me now or you and I finish the fight we started at the factory.” His tattoo bristled, moved over his skin, excited for the coming conflict.
Roman’s eyes turned bright as he followed the Ink. Avery didn’t look away. He braced, ready to take the conversation to the next level.
A full minute passed before Roman’s eyes dimmed and returned to their normal blue. He shoved the book he was holding into Avery’s chest and moved to the desk. “We’re Egyptian. I thought we were Thracian—Greek—but we’re not.”
Avery glanced at the cover, History of the Egyptian Gods, and shoved the tome back onto the shelf. “I didn’t come for a history lesson. See this shit on my back, stretching down my arm. This isn’t a tat I got on a drunken bar crawl. This crawled out of me all on its own.”
“Two centuries I believed a lie told to me by my father,” Roman continued as if Avery had never spoken. “Now…I not sure what I am, what you are...”
“You don’t know.” Avery interrupted.
Roman leaned back in the chair. “Surprising isn’t it?”
Actually, yeah. Roman knew everything. Any question they’d ever had, Roman had the answer.
“I’ve always known about your tat and your rages. Why do you think I spent so much time teaching you control. There are parts of your childhood you don’t remember because you can’t
. You didn’t survive the fire, Avery.”
The tattoo snaked over his skin even as a cold wave chilled his blood. Memories clouded his mind, searching for an inch of truth to Roman’s statement.
The single-wide, rusted, thirty-year-old trailer. Hungry days, hungrier nights. He’d spent most of his childhood starved and angry while his parents stayed high on whatever they could get their hands on. Then they started cooking meth, which opened a new door in hell.
“Ever wonder how I found you and EJ? Tragedy and survival, things like that always hit the papers and the news. ‘Miracle in your backyard, news at eleven’. Your back was burned, down the bone, but you shielded EJ. He survived without a scratch while you were given less than a ten percent chance of surviving. After a month in an induced coma, you woke completely healed except for the area on your shoulder. By then I had discovered you and buried the story before it hit and the authorities became too interested in your unique healing properties.”
Avery’s hand rose and touched his head as if it belonged to someone else. “I don’t remember any of this. What did you do to my mind?”
“Not me. You blocked the memory. Too much for a 10-year-old to handle.”
Roman did nothing without a reason. Avery leaned his knuckles on the desk. “Why tell me this now?”
“’Cause it’s time to face some truths about everyone in the family.”
“And what would that be?”
Roman glanced at the scattered books. “It’s on the top of my list to find out.”
Frustrated, Avery pushed away from the desk. He snatched up his sweater and yanked it back on. Something about Roman’s speech bothered him. “Is that why you took us in, because I was unique? Am I even a descendant?”
“I found you because you were unique. I adopted you because you needed me and I never turn my back on family. And no, you are not my descendant, but I have never hidden that from you and EJ. You know you descend from one of Elyssian’s reincarnated souls. That lineage has never been determined.”
The fabled Elyssian. Roman’s cursed lover had started all of this two thousand years ago. His unforgivable act had doomed him to chase her soul through repeated reincarnations only to lose her to death. Except for that one time, Roman found her after she’d married and had children. Two generations later, Avery and EJ arrived.
“If you told me that a week ago, I would’ve believed you without question. There are more of us out there.” It was a statement, not a question. “Ones who are not unique,” Avery said.
“I have a sister. She had five children. Two thousand years later... You do the math for that family tree.”
Avery pivoted and left the unsaid hanging between them as he stormed from the room. Algebra was never his forte, but even with an educated guess, the numbers didn’t look good. So much for being in an exclusive club.
Chapter Nineteen
Seated in a lovely lemon and apple green dayroom, Emeline sipped coffee from a dainty cup inlaid with the same floral pattern decorating the walls. The normalcy of the act belied her raging emotions. The answers to all of the questions the Order had about the Nicolis’s were here, in RockGate. For so long, every member dreamed of breaching the mansion and discovering all the secrets stored in its mysterious walls. And she was a guest drinking coffee and munching on pastries. Too bad she couldn’t enjoy the irony. Last night, for the first time in her life, she sifted a person. When she touched Avery, she sank into his mind and read his emotions. Lust and need had mingled into a driving force to possess her; all coated in a dense cloak that caressed her body like a long lost lover. Though, she didn’t have to touch him to know he had a dark soul; just look at his line of work.
Avery’s tattoo had come alive. It lived on him. In him? Is that why Ridley wanted him? Would the Ink give her extra power? Yet with Emeline, the Ink was a placid lake nurturing her lust while feeding her its torrid desires. It was equally beautiful and menacing. A presence with intimate knowledge of her most decadent desires and her needs. Avery made love to her. So did the darkness. She adored every mind-blowing second. What did that make her? Him?
I should have questioned him in the car! But the barely shielded fury on his face during the drive over stopped her from opening her mouth.
Now’s the perfect time for my dormant sifting abilities to kick in. She studied her palms and wished she had time to study her body when she’d dressed. They looked the same. The sensitive area on her chin had vanished. She lifted her shirt and snaked her hand underneath. Gently she probed the once painful area.
What the?
She stroked her ribs. Not even tenderness lingered. Could he have affected her? Infected her? “What’s happening to me?”
All the Nicolis’s healed fast, something in their DNA the Order hadn’t been able to identify from the few samples collected over the years. She knew Avery and EJ were the grandchildren from one of Elyssian’s reincarnated souls. It boggled her mind, but that’s what his dossier said. They didn’t have Egyptian blood, weren’t direct descendants from Roman and Reign through their sister Oria like Brayden, Thane, and Quin. What made these men special?
Memories of the passionate night and the moment when she awoke flickered through her head. The sweet ache between her thighs told a story. She’d actually done it—slept with the man she was assigned to watch. The man she was going to betray. A void opened where her heart should beat. Emeline groaned, yet her body moaned at the memory.
Don’t think! Don’t think!
Too late.
She felt handled, expertly manhandled by someone who knew what to do to a woman. That big body with his big hand and big dick worked her over, branded his name into her flesh, as much as the flames had seared his skin. Heat flooded her groin, making her smolder for more.
Focus! She ordered and drained the cup. Too many things crowded her plate to obsess about one night of lo—screwing! They did not make love.
Her mind ran scattershot over an ever-increasing spectrum of desires, which clashed with reality.
He had begged her to touch him. Hunger, that’s what gazed back at her when she stared into his green and black eyes. She’d never had a man stare at her with such heart-stopping want. An internal voice had thrown up the caution sign, warned her to run for her personal safety and mental stabilities. His warm skin had beckoned, proven irresistible to her passion-dazed eyes and the heat raging within her. She’d ached for him, on some level, she had from the moment she’d opened his file. She could’ve declined the job and taken another position in the Order. One look at his photograph and she couldn’t turn away.
She’d stalked him.
He’d stalked her.
Yin and yang. Sick and twisted and wrong, but what they did last night…
Emeline lurched to her feet. She’d broken a cardinal rule—never have a sleepover. More importantly, never be the one to sleep over. Then you don’t have to go through the awkward morning after theatrics, where you both promise to keep in touch and build a relationship, knowing damn well you didn’t even remember the other person’s name. She’d always opted for a quick getaway with a vow to chalk the experience up as an oops.
Except, Avery wasn’t an oops. He’d sandblasted her soul and left her…new? No! She banged her fist on the wall next to the bay windows. Her reflection judged and sentenced her. Long ago, she’d made a promise to never lie to herself. She’d just broken that promise.
“Hello, Hector didn’t inform me we had a guest.” The former Stella Walker, now the new Mrs. Roman Nicolis entered the room with a little girl shadowing her steps.
“I’m not a guest. I’m just waiting for Avery,” Emeline blurted before she had a chance to think the sentence through, then regretted her stupidity. This is why she didn’t want to be left alone. A little warning before he brought her here would’ve been nice, especially since she skipped a shower in favor of a quick bird bath. She hadn’t even combed her hair or brushed her teeth. The last thing she needed was a meet and greet wi
th anyone. Alone time with a toothbrush and a long soak topped her list.
“Well, it’s still a pleasure to meet you. I’m Stella, Roman’s wife, and this is my sister, Ember.” Stella extended her hand while her little sister pressed against her side. She glanced at the tray of coffee and petit fours. “I wish I could stay and visit, but we have an appointment and then we’re going shopping, maybe even the park.” She stroked the child’s hair. “We’d better get going. It gets dark so quickly this time of year.” She glanced over Emeline’s shoulder at the waning afternoon sun. “Maybe we can have you over for dinner some time?”
Chances of that are slim. “Sure, any time.”
With a final smile, Stella and her sister left. Good, maybe she’d have a few moments to gather herself and find a bathroom.
No luck. Avery stomped into the room, anger radiating from him, polluting the air. His hard gaze slammed into her and sent the blood rushing through her veins. Something in her answered his call for violence.
He tossed his coat onto a chair and closed the distance between them. She noticed his eyes. Now, they were mostly black, the green section reduced by a third.
Emeline stared into his strangely beautiful eyes and wondered. Could it be when angered his irises turned black, the rest of the time, green? An Inky darkness stirred in the dark half, so similar to what had caressed her, and compelled her to move closer. She fought the urge, even as desire singed her skin and need shot through her heart.
Evermore (Descendants of Ra: Book 3) Page 17
